Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Wednesday, 18 March 2009

As I continue learning to sew, I'm less and less perfectionist. This is the lower side of the big gores. I rounded it using no patterns or templates, just by sight. What's more, two layers at once. Incredible at me! :-DAs there's a round part at the lower edge of the dress, it's hard to fold the edge just like that. I set a loose straight stitch and gathered it. I ironed the gathered pieces as well as the rest and then it was easy. This can also be used when you fold the lower edge of a skirt or dress.The hardest step - hood. I was lucky to already have a pattern from the past. I altered the liripipe and the curve under the chin. I was very afraid about how I would join the hood and the body of the robe.I made up the curve at the bottom and measured the length of half the neckline's circumference. Then I altered the curve to have the same length. Or I tried to at least :)By the way, a hood takes very small amount of fabric when made from two halves. I had to do this at two hoods. For the seam in the middle not to be visible, I sewed it and flattened with two lines of stitches. I call this machine ironing:-)Curves are hard to sew. That's why I basted the hood to the neckline first. I started from the chind to the shoulder. Then placed the end right to the spine and secured with a pin. I approximately put the two layers one on another and moved them until they lay flat. I added pins and could go on basting. This was necessary, because my guess of the lenght of the curve was not very exact..When I had one half, I started the other one from the chin again. I sewed the hood to the body on machine and cut off the excess. I pinned the rest of the seams and sewed them with sew-and-serge stitch. I serged the neck and the face.I folded the facial edge back and sewed. That's all. If you don't count my making tags with names of the owners and hiding them deep in the hoods. You know, having four almost the same robes and comparing the length and width every time... :)This is how the monk's robe looks like with a hood down. In fact it's not ment to be for a monk. Our knights just must have a sort of covering clothes to come to the stage before they can reveal their true character.

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

I cut a retangle to two triangles. If you look at the picture, you can see that I symmetrically trimmed off the bottoms. The leftovers have been used as sleeve gores - I was lucky, from side gores for four robes I got little gores for two pairs of sleeves, which I needed exactly :)I pinned the gores on (right side to right side) and sewed.Then I pinned the sleeve, the sides together and a gore to the side.This occure at one robe with armhole gores. I just sewed along the edge and when I turned the robe over, I found out that one end of the gore is outside.No time to repair, shame on me:) At the rest of the robes, I tried to sew next to the existing seam to avoid the situation. By the way, you can see that I used a stitch for elastic materials that allows to sew and serge at once. I love it.The gores now don't look perfect, but sufficient. Anyway, on the totally black twill, few things will be visible:-PAs far as the side gores, normally I would sew the sides together to the top of the gore. Here, to save time, I have sewn one side of the gore to the body, as you could see, so that I might sew from the sleeve to the bottom in one move. It's just important to keep the fabric that doesn't belong to the seam away when sewing.This fake gore inserting is slightly noticeable (assymetrical), but still looks nice and is fast. All for today :)

Friday, 13 March 2009

My new project - four monk's robes. Two of them will have small garts under the armpit. The pattern is easy. A long rectangle for the body and a wide rectangle for the sleeve.The sleeve prepared above should be sewn to the body to form this kind of cross. When sewing you should put it right side to the right side.This happens when you seem to have a bad hair day. You may accidentally sew the garts to wrong sides (high rectangle instead of a wide one).And if you are having a special bad hair day, after ripping the garts out and sewing them to the right place, you may sew them on like this.Anyway, if you ever see a wrong side of a seam just next to the right side of a seam, you should stop to think for a moment:-)

Tuesday, 3 March 2009

I sewed in the garts - right from the armholes. Here you can see that I pinned the thin linen so that I could cut the lower edge symmetrically (mainly the garts' lower part).I wanted to iron the hem, but I found out it would be easier to just fold it like origami:) By the way, linen is really similar to paper..Actually, I wanted to make the stitches that would be visible by hand. Eventually, the whip stitch I used seem like kitsch to me now. I fell in love with the stitch and use it more often than I should have:-)So this tunic is finished for now. I'll see if the future owner will want some editing..